XVII
Such was the outcome of this affair. But at the beginning of this Book I told all that the Empress did to Belisarius and Photius and Bouzes. [2] And two members of the Blue Faction, Cilicians by birth, with a great tumult set upon Callinicus, Governor of the Second Cilicia, and proceeded to lay violent hands upon him, and they slew the man’s groom who stood hard by and was trying to defend his master, while the Governor and the whole populace looked on. [3] And he by process of law brought about the death of the factionists who were found guilty of this and of many other murders, but she, upon learning of this and making a display of the fact that she favoured the Blues, caused him to be impaled for no good reason and while he still held office, on the grave of the murderers. [4] And the Emperor, pretending to weep and lament over the murdered man, sat there groaning, and though he held many threats over those who had performed the deed, he did nothing; yet he by no means declined to plunder the money of the deceased.
[5] But Theodora also concerned herself to devise punishments for sins against the body. Harlots, for instance, to the number of more than five hundred who plied their trade in the midst of the market-place at the rate of three obols — just enough to live on — she gathered together, and sending them over to the opposite mainland she confined them in the Convent of Repentance, as it is called, trying there to compel them to adopt a new manner of life. [6] And some of them threw themselves down from a height at night and thus escaped the unwelcome transformation.
[7] There were two girls in Byzantium who were sisters; they were not only the offspring of a consular father and of three generations of Consuls, but drew their lineage from men who from remote times were of the foremost blood of the whole Senate. [8] These had previously entered into marriage, but it had come about by the death of their husbands that they became widows. And immediately Theodora selected two men — men who were not only of the common herd, but also disgusting fellows — and made it her business to mate them with the women, whom she charged with living unchaste lives. [9] And they, fearing lest this be brought to pass, fled into the Church of Sophia, and coming into the holy baptismal chamber, they seized with their hands the font which is there. [10] But the Empress Theodora inflicted upon them such dire constraint and suffering that in their desire to escape these woes they became eager enough to accept the marriage in place of them. Thus for her no place remained undefiled or inviolate. [11] So these women, against their wills, were united in marriage to men who were beggars and outcasts, much beneath them in standing, although noble suitors were at hand for them. [12] And their mother, who also had become a widow, not daring to groan or to cry out at the calamity, attended the betrothal. [13] But later Theodora, by way of expiating the scandal, decided to console them at the expense of public misfortunes. For she appointed both of the men magistrates. [14] But no comfort came to the girls even so, and woes incurable and unbearable fell from the hands of these men upon practically all their subordinates, as will be told by me in the later Books. [15] For in Theodora there was respect of neither magistrate nor government, nor was anything else the object of her concern, provided only that her will was being accomplished.
[16] Now she had chanced to conceive a child by one of her lovers while she was still on the stage, and being late about discovering her misfortune she did everything to accomplish, in her usual way, an abortion, but she was unsuccessful, by all the means employed, in killing the untimely infant, for by now it lacked but little of its human shape. [17] Consequently, since she met with no success, she gave up trying and was compelled to bear the child. And when the father of the new-born child saw that she was distressed and displeased because after becoming a mother she would no longer be able to go on using her body as she had done, since he rightly suspected that she would destroy the child, he acknowledged the infant by lifting it up in his arms, and, naming it John, since it was a male, he went his way to Arabia, whither he was bound. [18] And when he himself was about to die, and John was now a young lad, his father told him the whole story of the mother. [19] And he, after performing all the customary rites over his father after his death, a little later came to Byzantium and announced the fact to those who had constant access to his mother. [20] And they, supposing that she would not reason otherwise than as a human being, reported to the mother that her son John had come. [21] But the woman, fearing that the matter would become known to her husband, gave orders that the boy should come into her presence. [22] And when he came and she had seen him, she entrusted him to one of her domestics to whom she was always wont to delegate such matters. [23] And by what method the poor wretch was spirited out of the world I cannot say, but no man to this day has been able to see him, even since the death of the Empress.
[24] At that time it came to pass that practically all the women had become corrupt in character. For they sinned against their husbands with complete licence, since such acts brought them no danger or harm, because even those who were found guilty of adultery remained unscathed; for they straightway went to the Empress and turning the tables brought counter-suit against their husbands and haled them before the court though no charges had been made against them. [25] And all the good the husbands got of it was to pay a fine double the wife’s dowry, although no charge had been proved against them, and then to be scourged and, usually, led off to prison, and afterwards to look on while the adulteresses preened themselves and more boldly than ever accepted their seducers’ embraces. And many of the adulterers actually attained honour from this conduct. [26] Consequently most men thereafter, though outrageously treated by their wives, were very glad to remain silent and escape the scourge, granting their wives complete freedom by allowing them to think that they had not been detected.
[27] This woman claimed the right to administer everything in the State by her own arbitrary judgment. For she controlled the election of the occupants of both the magistracies and the priesthoods, investigating and guarding very persistently against just one thing, namely, that the candidate for the dignity should not be an honourable or good man or one who would be likely to be incompetent to carry out her instructions. [28] And she regulated all marriages with an authority that may be described as grandmotherly. [29] It was then for the first time that men and women gave up entering into a voluntary betrothal looking to marriage; for each man would all of a sudden find that he had a wife — not because she pleased him, as is customary even among the barbarians, but because this was the will of Theodora. [30] Thus women who were being married had precisely the same experience in their turn; for they were compelled to be united with husbands quite against their will. [31] And many a time Theodora even took the bride away from the bridal chamber for no reason at all and left the bridegroom unmarried, merely remarking in a burst of passion that the woman displeased her. [32] And she did this to many men, including Leon, who held the office of Referendarius, and to Saturninus the son of Hermogenes, who had been Magister, in the case of women to whom they were betrothed. For this Saturninus had an unwedded second cousin to whom he was betrothed, a free-born woman of seemly deportment whom her father Cyrillus had pledged to him, Hermogenes having already departed this life. [33] And after their bridal chamber had already been closed fast upon them, she took the bridegroom into custody and he was led to a second chamber, where, with great wailing and lament, he married the daughter of Chrysomallo. [34] Now this Chrysomallo had long before been a dancer and again a courtesan, but at that time she was living in the Palace with another Chrysomallo and Indaro. [35] For instead of the phallus and the life in the theatre, they were managing their affairs here. [36] And when Saturninus had slept with the girl and found that she had lost her maidenhood, he reported to one of his intimates that he had married a girl who had been “tampered with.” [37] And when this remark was brought to Theodora, she commanded the servants to hoist the man aloft, as one does children who go to school, because he was putting on airs and assuming a lofty dignity to which he had no right, and she gave him a drubbing
on the back with many blows and told him not to be a foolish babbler.
[38] Now the things which she did to John the Cappadocian have been told in the earlier narrative. These things were done by her to the man in anger, not on account of his offences against the State (and the proof is that later, when men did still worse things to her subjects, she treated no one of them in such a way), but because he was making bold to oppose the woman outright in other matters and especially because he kept slandering her to the Emperor, so that she came very near getting into a state of hostility with her husband. [39] But here, as I have said, I must by all means tell the reasons for her conduct which are absolutely true. [40] And even when she had got him imprisoned in Egypt after he had endured all the sufferings which I have previously described, even thus she did not reach any satiety of punishing the man, but she never ceased searching out false witnesses against him. [41] And four years later she succeeded in finding two members of the Green Faction in Cyzicus who were said to be of those who had risen against the Bishop. [42] And she won over these men with flattering speeches and with threats, with the result that one of them, in terror and at the same time uplifted by hopes, laid the sacrilege of the Bishop’s murder at John’s door. [43] As for the other man, he refused absolutely to contradict the truth, though he was so racked by the torture that he was even expected to die immediately. [44] Therefore,a although she was unable, no matter what means she employed, to destroy John through this subterfuge, she cut off the right hands of these two young men, of the one because he had refused to bear false witness, and of the other in order to prevent her plot from becoming altogether manifest. [45] And though these intrigues were being carried on in the publicity of the market-place, Justinian pretended to know absolutely nothing of what was going on.
XVIII
And that he was no human being, but, as has been suggested, some manner of demon in human form, one might infer by making an estimate of the magnitude of the ills which he inflicted upon mankind. [2] For it is in the degree by which a man’s deeds are surpassingly great that the power of the doer becomes evident. [3] Now to state exactly the number of those who were destroyed by him would never be possible, I think, for anyone soever, or for God. [4] For one might more quickly, I think, count all grains of sand than the vast number whom this Emperor destroyed. But making an approximate estimate of the extent of territory which has become to be destitute of inhabitants, I should say that a myriad myriad of myriads perished. [5] For in the first place, Libya, which attains to so large dimensions, has been so thoroughly ruined that for the traveller who makes a long journey it is no easy matter, as well as being a noteworthy fact, to meet a human being. [6] And yet the Vandals who recently took up arms there numbered eight myriads, and as for their women and children and slaves, who could guess their number? [7] And as for the Libyans, those who formerly lived in the cities, those who tilled the soil, and those who toiled at the labours of sea — all of which I had the fortune to witness with my own eyes — how could any man estimate the multitude of them? And still more numerous than these were the Moors there, all of whom were in the end destroyed together with their wives and offspring. [8] Many too of the Roman soldiers and of those who had followed them there from Byzantium the earth has covered. So that if one maintains that five hundred myriads of human beings perished in Libya, he would not by any means, I know, be doing justice to the facts. [9] And the reason for this was that immediately after the defeat of the Vandals, Justinian not only did not concern himself with strengthening his dominion over the country, and not only did he not make provision that the safeguarding of its wealth should rest securely in the good-will of its inhabitants, but straightway he summoned Belisarius to return home without the least delay, laying against him an utterly unjustified accusation of tyranny, to the end that thereafter, administering Libya with full licence, he might swallow it up and thus make plunder of the whole of it.
[10] At any rate he immediately sent out assessors of the land and imposed certain most cruel taxes which had not existed before. And he laid hold of the estates, whichever were best. And he excluded the Arians from the sacraments which they observed. [11] Also he was tardy in the payment of his military forces, and in other ways became a grievance to the soldiers. From these causes arose the insurrections which resulted in great destruction. [12] For he never was able to adhere to settled conditions, but he was naturally inclined to make confusion and turmoil everywhere.
[13] And as to Italy, which has not less than three times the area of Libya, it has become everywhere even more destitute of men than Libya. [14] Consequently the estimate of persons likewise destroyed here will be fairly easy. For the cause of what happened in Italy has already been explained by me in an earlier passage. Indeed all the errors which he made in Libya were repeated by him here also. [15] And by adding to the administrative staff the Logothetes, as they are called, he upset and ruined everything immediately. [16] Now the sway of the Goths extended, before this war, from the land of Gaul as far as the boundaries of Dacia, where the city of Sirmium is situated. [17] As for Gaul and Venetia, the Germans held the greater part of them at the time when the Roman army came into Italy. [18] But the Gepaides control Sirmium and the country thereabout, which is all, roughly speaking, completely destitute of human habtation. [19] For some were destroyed by the war, some by disease and famine, the natural concomitants of war. [20] And Illyricum and Thrace in its entirety, comprising the whole expanse of country from the Ionian Gulf to the outskirts of Byzantium, including Greece and the Thracian Chersonese, was overrun practically every year by Huns, Sclaveni and Antae, from the time when Justinian took over the Roman Empire, and they wrought frightful havoc among the inhabitants of that region. [21] For in each invasion more than twenty myriads of Romans, I think, were destroyed or enslaved there, so that a veritable “Scythian wilderness” came to exist everywhere in this land.
[22] Such are the disasters wrought by the wars in Libya and in Europe. The Saracens meantime were overrunning the Romans of the East, from Egypt to the frontiers of Persia, throughout this whole period without interruption, and they accomplished such thorough-going destruction that this entire region came to be very sparsely populated, and it will never be possible, I think, for any human being to discover by enquiry the numbers of those who perished in this way. [23] The Persians under Chosroes four times made inroads into the rest of the Roman domain and dismantled the cities, and as for the people whom they found in the captured cities and in each country district, they slew a part and led some away with them, leaving the land bare of inhabitants wherever they chanced to descend. [24] And ever since the Persian invasion of the land of Colchis, the Colchians and the Lazi and the Romans have continued to be steadily destroyed up to the present day.
[25] Moreover, neither the Persians on their part nor the Saracens nor the Huns nor the race of the Sclaveni nor any other of the barbarians have had the fortune to retire unscathed from Roman soil. [26] For in the course of their inroads, and particularly during the sieges and battles, they fell foul of many obstacles and were destroyed equally with their enemies. [27] For not alone Romans but practically the whole barbarian world as well felt the influence of Justinian’s lust for bloodshed. [28] For not only was Chosroes himself likewise vicious in character, but he was also provided by Justinian, as has been stated by me in the appropriate place, with all the motives for waging war. [29] For he did not think it worth while to adapt his activities to the opportune occasions, but he kept doing everything out of season, in times of peace and in periods of truce ever devising, with crafty purpose, occasions of war against his neighbours, and in times of war, on the other hand, growing lax for no good reason and carrying on the preparations for military operations too deliberately, all because of his parsimony, and instead of devoting himself to such things, scanning the heavens and developing a curious interest concerning the nature of God, and neither giving over the war, because of his bloodthirsty and abominable character, nor being
, on the other hand, able to get the better of his enemy, because he was prevented by his niggardliness from busying himself with the necessary things. [20] Thus during his reign the whole earth was constantly drenched with human blood shed by both the Romans and practically all the barbarians.
[31] This, then, to state the case in a word, is what came to pass during this period of wars throughout the whole Roman Empire. [32] And when I reckon over the events which took place during the insurrections both in Byzantium and in each several city, I believe that no less slaughter of men came about in this way than in actual warfare. [33] For since justice and impartial chastisement for wrong-doing scarcely existed at all, but of the two Factions one was actually supported by the Emperor, assuredly the other party did not remain quiet either; on the contrary, because one group was being worsted and the other was full of confidence, they constantly had in view desperation and mad recklessness; and sometimes attacking each other in crowds and sometimes fighting in small groups, or even, if it so happened, setting ambuscades one against one, for two-and-thirty years without a pause they kept wreaking fearful vengeance upon one another, and at the same time they were being put to death by the magistrate, as a rule, who was charged with the control of the populace. [34] But the punishment for their crimes was, for the most part, levelled against the Greens. Furthermore, the punishment of the Samaritans and of those called heretics filled the Roman Empire with slaughter. [35] These things, however, are here mentioned by me merely in summary, inasmuch as they have been sufficiently recorded by me somewhat earlier.
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